The health industry in the United States is a mess, probably worse than a woke vampire movie where vampires use pronouns like undead/cursed and make their victims go to DEI training (Death, Exsanguination and Immortality) before selecting them based on their social privilege score. Talk about sucking!
But back to the point: the system is a mess. Case in point, the insurance companies are for-profit institutions. As, um, you might have noticed from recent events this leads to almost inevitable conflict between the patient and “their” insurance company.
-WiscoDave
All true. And all irrelevant, as nothing will be done to correct the system. There are too many job titles, paychecks and lifestyles entirely dependent on the system as it is. Which means the system will, at some point in the foreseeable future, do a Thelma and Louise right off the cliff. Only once that happens will there be anything done to correct the criminality and grift built into the present setup. Brace for impact, and hope you don't need and serious medical care once this sucker goes down, because there will be a period of time where care will not be available at any price.
ReplyDeleteNow imagine it NOT being 'for profit' and having it run by the government.
ReplyDeleteThe price will quadruple and more and more people and bureaucrats will 'for profit' from it.
thanks to o'bamacareless & millions of illegal leeches, my insurance premium is $21,000+ a year out of my paycheck with another possible $20+K in out of pocket and the coverage shrinks every year,,,it is no longer health insurance, it is a tax paid to cover the feel good programs of the communist left
ReplyDeleteYep. Worst system imaginable. Except for all the others. Canadian health care? Just die, we'll help. UK? NHS is a joke. Etc. Want your broken hip fixed this afternoon? US healthcare. Want your heart attack stented in 45 minutes? US healthcare. The problems we have, and we do have some, are the result of government interference in a no longer free market.
ReplyDeleteYes, we WOULD be better off without the insurance (Obamacare, anyone?), and we WOULD be better off without healthcare as a "benefit" of employment (blame Truman for that one) that lets companies cook the books and encourages price inflation.
But fee for service healthcare? Paid exclusively by the private patient? A cost paid by the consumer efficiently and effectively allocates a scarce resource, AND prevents overuse. Get the gub'mint thumb off the scale, go back to healthcare paid for by the user -not third parties- and a basically good system will be even better.
Medical as a benefit of employment was as much Roosevelt as Truman. Wage freezes in War industries left few ways companies could compete for better workers, and "additional benefits" was one of them.
DeleteJohn in Indy
Shyster lawyer, ambulance chasers are a prime cause of the costs. People complain about healthcare insurance policy costs. Most doctors pay $100,000+ a year for liability insurance and hospitals pay more. It turns healthcare into a friggin money musical chair game where the real winners are the lawyers and the patient losers.
ReplyDeleteyeah. even techs need to carry some sort of insurance to cover what the hospital will not cover. also too is the rise of medical billing. you know why you do not see small
Deletedoctor offices like before ? simple. the reason is the insurance companies refuse to pay them ! damn near every hospital has a army of billers and a few lawyers on staff to get their money. now, figure in the illegals and who is paying their medical bills ? simple. they pass the cost on to you !
and it kind of funny how so called "non profit" companies like blue cross can have billions left over every year ? after all if they paid all the claims, there be no money left over for their bonuses now they seem to get EVERY YEAR.
Healthcare is a catch-22. If those involved can't make a profit, there's no incentive to improve things. On the other hand, when all that COUINTS is profit, there's ALSO no incentive to improve things; just to charge more for what's already out there. I think the biggest ghost in the machine is how cozy the government is with the "for-profit" people. There's no way in HELL the likes of Fauci, wholly owned and well fed by Big Pharma, should be allowed to exist in the government ranks. Of course, someone can "pass a law" preventing this from happening and it'll still happen, just via a different route.
ReplyDeleteI've long held that the problem with healthcare is NOT the lack of availability of "insurance," but the COST OF HEALTHCARE. Indeed, the astronomical cost of healthcare can be DIRECTLY traced back to the advent of medical insurance. When the patient no longer felt the sting of the cost, the costs rose exponentially. I was in the hospital during the summer due to blood clots in both my leg and my lungs. I lay there for three days on a Heparin drip while a nurse stabbed me every four hours to check the clotting factor. I attempted to eat what was BY FAR the ABSOLUTE WORST institutional food I've ever eaten. That was ALL the care I received.
The total charged to my insurance was FIFTY-FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS. Given the goods and services rendered during my stay, that amount was COMPLETELY INSANE! THAT is what needs to be dealt with here!!!
Amateur. My heart valve replacement and quad bypass over an 8-day hospital stay last summer was billed to Anthem Blue Cross as a whopping $538,000. Not including thoracic surgeon and anesthesiologist, who billed separately. Anthem paid just over $90k. I paid nothing.
DeleteSame here. I had open heart surgery to correct a genetic defect (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) at the Mayo Clinic in February of 2022, after seeing the doctors there for the first time three weeks earlier. I was in the hospital for three and a half weeks after the surgery. We have Aetna and I believe my out of pocket on that was around $3000. The total bill was around $165k, if I recall. I don’t think I would’ve gotten that kind of high level care that quickly anywhere else in the world.
DeleteI would like everyone to pay the same rate whether or not they have insurance. Insurance should pay the bill, not set the price. If I had insurance prices, I would not need insurance except for catastrophic insurance.
ReplyDeleteThat is directly the fault of federal regulation. Medicaid/care requires that they be billed the "advertized price that everybody pays" and then refuses to pay but a small fraction of that. Thus, the current shit show of medical pricing being through the roof, but nobody ever paying that price. Makes it impossible to compare prices and shop responsibly though! Ain't it great?
DeleteJohn G.
Yes, I'm sure the government will run health care with all of the compassion of the IRS. https://x.com/RobynUrback/status/1869024092810367255?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1869024092810367255%7Ctwgr%5Ea57f5c7693bfa8b99e71c98bdc2ab5de55d885c9%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fblazingcatfur.ca%2F2024%2F12%2F17%2Fwtf-3428%2F
ReplyDeleteMany countries may say their health system sucks, but they also say it's better then America's
ReplyDeleteI went to a private clinic in the Republic of South Africa not long ago. Dr. spent 45 minutes with me and charged me $30 cash. I went across the street and paid another $30 for antibiotics and blood pressure pills.
ReplyDeleteOnly gov regulations could allow such a vast difference from USA where that visit and pharmacy bill would have been north of $500.
used to do MRI in a private outpatient clinic , the price per scan was 1200 (1990"s)
ReplyDeletewe opened a clinic/center in upstate NY. over half of our patients where from across the boarder and they paid in CASH. their price in cash was 600. in the 2 weeks I was there, I scanned over 40 of them. they said they would have to wait almost a year to get a CT scan done at home.
Yes....our healthcare financial system is f**ked. Wanna make it worse? Make it a single payer government run system. Then you will be getting for a return to the current system. Want things to improve? Repeal the ridiculous EMTALA law that mandates under legal penalties that care is provided to indigents and illegals regardless of their ability or willingness to pay for it.
ReplyDeleteI am from Germany and we have various health insurance companies. They pay nearly everything. They are for the normal people. We also have private insurance companies where you pay and get money back from them. This is optional and normally for rich people and higher ranking employees or bosses of companies. And then we have the federal employees (those that cannot be fired, except if they steal big or be patriots (in Germany they are called Nazis) or put not-nice memes about muslims, foreigners in a Whats App group). They have their own insurance.
ReplyDeleteI had two surgeries at my spine (one to remove a spinal disc and replace it with surgical concrete and 16 years later to remove the surgical concrete because it started an infection. Let me tell you, the face of the doctor was hilarious! When he saw on the MRI the surgical concrete his face was like the Dr on STAR TREK "They used what?!? Thats Stone Age!) but both surgeries were nearly free,
If you go into a hospital you have to pay EUR 10,00 per day but it is maxed at 28 days = EUR 280,00 per year.
For medicine it is maxed at EUR 10,00 per medicine.
Those numbers can be lowered if the insurance company has a treaty with the hospital or the producer of the medicine.
But after you have reached a certain threshold (normally 2% of annual brutto income) any additional hospital / medicine is free.
This is just a rough overview.
Of course with so many invaders, sorry immigrants who are of course contributing to the economy of Germany soooo much (IRONY! SARCASM!) in 2025 we Germans have to pay more for our health insurance.
And lets not forget, that because of various treaties, where we wre absolutely NOT pulled over the table (AGAIN IRONY! SARCASM!) the price for Turkey (for instance) to accept Germanies health insurance in Turkey was that if a Tukish guy is health insured in Germany this means his entire family clan - yes, his wives, children, his parents and all his brothers and sisters too - are insured too.
They claimed it was cheaper then to put money into a turkish bank and when a German needs medical help in Turkey to pay it out of this account.
Alex Lund
I am literally in the hospital as I type this after fighting the system for NINETEEN MONTHS to get 2 stents put in .yesterday here in Washington state.
ReplyDelete3 different medical organizations and Cign* insurance. Every test you could possibly imagine plus 4 Cat scans over that period and my share after the insurance for each one was $1500.
I have already paid out almost $9.000 on my medical bills this year BUT, that means I have hit the limit on my out of pocket and now the insurance company gets to pay for 100% of this surgery bill.
I'm betting it's going to be about a hundred grand.
OBummercare knocked the stuffings out of the health care system. The plandemic drove a stake into it's chest. It's still there, bleeding out slowly. Don't forget (((They))) fired all the healthy Pure Bloods.
ReplyDelete